Saturday, December 11, 2010

Cancun Climate Change Conference - a little more detail

Following up my last blog post, I just briefly write what happened because some of the news I found and read don't seem to capture it.

During the first week, at the Plenary, when issues were raised, instead of being discussed there, consultation was done outside the Plenary. At the same time, at the Plenary, most of the delegates were just making their national statements.

Then on Saturday, at an informal Prenary, a document revising what had been worked on in order to give a guidance to prepare for the draft that was to be presented to the ministers for the high level discussion starting the following Tuesday. It was for transparency.

Then the following day, the president of COP/CMP (Patricia Espinosa), announced how they moved forward from that time on. She emphasized on transparency and inclusiveness. And in order to get ministers involved in early in the negotiations, she announced that she had asked ministers to work on each subject (such as Mitigation, Adaptation, Finance, etc.) as a pair, for example, the minister from Australia (a developed country) and the minister from Bangladesh (a developing country) to work together on the issue of Finance inviting all the delegates. She announced that ministers were not allowed to do political negotiations with other ministers and that they still leave the delegates to negotiate.

During those consultations lead by a pair of ministers for each subject, at the door of each meeting, the name plates of all the countries were placed, and all the countries were invited to join the consultations. So they were not closed-door behind-the-scene negotiations.

Informal Plenaries were held time to time to report the progress.

Then Thursday night, at an Informal Plenary, the ministers for each subject reported the progress, what had been agreed and the collected options for an issue that had not reached on agreement. Again, this was for transparency. Then the president announced that she would prepare draft documents based on the works so far. And she announced that they (the Parties) work through the night to work for it. And there would be another Informal Plenary at 8:30am on Friday, which was actually postponed because of the important negotiations going on (the president reported on Friday).

So throughout the process, all the Parties were able to participate and because the ministers lead the consultations for each subject, they made progress instead of delegates just not having a choice but stating their national positions.

Big contrast to Copenhagen, where many things were decided behind the door and pushed to the official Plenary. Multilateralism lead to a good result. Compromise was the key. And transparency and inclusiveness were assured throughout the process.

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